


Sympathy for the Devil

by Lyrstzha



Category: Babylon 5, Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Crossover, Dark, Demons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-25
Updated: 2008-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:49:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/pseuds/Lyrstzha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On three different dark nights in his life, Michael Garibaldi tries to sell his soul to a demon who isn't quite as demonic as one might expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sympathy for the Devil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepfishy](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Deepfishy).



> This exists somewhere between gen and slash, which is to say that there is technically a kiss, but I don't quite think of it as a _kiss_, if you see what I mean.

"Hey there, friend. Why the long face?" Michael Garibaldi loves the whole world from the bottom of a bottle. He doesn't drink too often—not now, not yet—but when he does, he's just that kind of a drunk.

"Sold my soul tonight," the hangdog-looking young man holding up the other end of the bar answers simply. He has the gaunt, intense look of starving artists everywhere.

Garibaldi lifts his glass in a salute with a crooked, wry grin that looks like a grimace of pain seen from the wrong angle. "I'll drink to _that_. Think we've all been there, huh?"

The man peers at him silently over the rim of his own glass for a long moment, draining the last sip and then frowning at Garibaldi with the resolute gravity of the very drunk or very sober. "Not like that," he finally says, putting the empty glass down with a hollow thunk. "I mean demons and hellfire and all."

Garibaldi snorts derisively. "Whatever that guy's having, make mine something else," he tells the hulking bartender.

The young man shakes his head, but doesn't seem to take offense. "You know the funny thing? I was a Foundationist. Didn't even believe in demons. Now that's what I call irony."

"Sorry, buddy, but I don't think irony's exactly the word I'd go with there," Garibaldi snickers into his whiskey. He washes his laughter down with a mouthful of his drink, and adds idly, "What's the going rate on souls these days, anyway?"

The man looks down at his own hands and they uncurl on the bar, as if they're releasing something they were clutching onto. "Yesterday I could sort of hold a tune. Today?"

The man takes a deep breath, lifts his shaggy head, and this _voice_ pours out in song. Garibaldi never imagined that human vocal chords could shape anything so profound, so sublimely beautiful. The notes wash over him, raising gooseflesh on his arms and thickening the back of his throat with a gathering pressure that wants to turn into sobbing for the sheer transcendent glory of that tide of sound.

"_You_," Garibaldi chokes when the man quiets and bows his head again. "_That_," he tries again.

"Yeah," the singer sighs. "I know. For the small price of eternal damnation, you, too, can sing like an angel."

And of course Garibaldi doesn't really _believe_ the man, but in some small way he doesn't quite _not_ believe either. In the face of that music, he can't entirely discount anything. So he asks, "But how do you even make a deal like that?"

The singer looks at him again for a minute, his expression hesitant and clouded, before he solemnly tells Garibaldi about crossroads and boxes and herbs and ident cards.

Years later, many of them sober, Garibaldi will own and cherish every recording by the legendary singer Armando Covarrubias, but he will somehow never feel right telling anyone about the time he actually met the man himself.

 

The first time Garibaldi summons a demon, it's out of guilt.

He's been working security on that cesspit Europa, and he's a little too good as his job. He makes some powerful enemies who'd like to see him dead. Unfortunately, they take out his best friend—really, his _only_ friend these days—Frank Kemmer instead. Garibaldi stands gaping up at the Europan sky as Frank's shuttle explodes into a burning smear of light, nauseatingly certain that time will never be able to blunt the horrifying clarity of this moment. (And it's true; there will never come a day when he can close his eyes without seeing the afterimage of this blaze ghosting behind his eyelids.) He's the one who has to tell Frank's wife and little girl, has to watch the grief drown them. He knows that it should have been him. He gets to thinking of all kinds of crazy ways to make things better, especially late at night and deep in the bottle.

So, Garibaldi goes to a crossroads late one evening, the stars a muted glitter beyond the dome above him. He prepares a box as he was told, sets it in the center of the empty street, and pours a handful of dirt he liberated from the hydroponics station over it.

"Dude!" a voice exclaims behind him, startling Garibaldi into a sharp lurch forward. "This is Europa, isn't it?" Garibaldi spins around, and there's a man in strange clothes, like something out of a historical documentary, gazing upwards with a wide and wondering grin. "This ain't my first rodeo, you understand, but this space shit just never gets old." The man tips his head down to meet Garibaldi's stare, and now the solid black of his eyes is jarringly obvious.

"Who are you?" Garibaldi finds himself asking.

The man cocks his head and arches an eyebrow. "Kinda dumb question, considering. You wanna try that again from the top?"

Garibaldi's mouth opens and closes a couple of times before he says, "_You're_ a demon?" Because whatever he was expecting, it surely wasn't _this_.

The demon looks down at himself and shrugs. "You were kinda hoping for horns and a tail, weren't you? Maybe some hooves? Yeah, I get that a lot. Sorry, man." He points vaguely over his shoulder. "If it'll make you feel any better, I could probably rustle up a pitchfork from somewhere." His lips quirk, and Garibaldi just knows the creature is laughing at him.

And that's when Garibaldi decides to go with it. "I don't care what you look like. You can wear a rubber chicken on your head if that's what floats your boat. A buddy of mine told me you could make deals. That true?"

"Rubber chicken," the demon muses. "I like that. Might try that one sometime. Eternity's kind of a long time, y'know—it's the little things that keep you going." His teeth flash white in the dimness, and the streetlights make pinpoint reflections in his black eyes like stars in the night sky.

"Whatever you are, you can't do a damn thing for me, can you?" Garibaldi challenges.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that, Mikey. Sure, I can trade you your friend's life for your soul. No problem. Bringing back the dead's actually pretty basic, once you get the hang of it." He leans closer, like he's sharing a secret. "But I'm not gonna do that, Mikey."

"What?!" Garibaldi barks at him, too caught up to bother asking how the demon knows his name and his problem. He figures maybe that's just a thing demons do. "Why the hell not?"

The demon sighs. "Looks, it's not 'cause I don't know how you feel—believe me, I get it—but you've only got one soul to give. You don't wanna spend it on an accident that wasn't really your fault anyway. So you bring back this one guy and spend the rest of eternity in torment. He'd better be one damned good guy for that kinda deal, if you'll excuse the pun."

"This isn't funny!" Garibaldi snaps at him, and the demon raises a placating hand in return, as if to apologize. "Frank _was_ a damned good guy," Garibaldi insists before the demon can say anything. "Best I ever knew. And he's got a family that needs him."

"Yeah, I figured you'd say something like that." The demon scrubs a hand back and forth through his short hair. He looks away, then back, sighing again. "Okay. You're gonna have to trust me when I tell you this isn't how or when you should go out. I can't tell you exactly what's coming, but I can see that you got destiny all over you like fleas on a dog. You pack it in now, and whatever you need to do, it might not get done. I know you miss your buddy, but dude, think about the whole wide universe out there, all right?"

Garibaldi raises a skeptical eyebrow. "Are you seriously telling me that you won't take my soul because I'm too important?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Let me get this straight." Garibaldi starts to circle, just like he would when questioning a suspect, but it doesn't seem to rattle this guy at all; it doesn't even dull the edge of the smirk on his face. "You're a demon, right? Aren't you supposed to be trying to cause evil, chaos, and destruction?"

"Well," the demon tilts his head to the side. "Technically. But—"

Garibaldi sucks in his breath and cuts the demon off. "Shit! I'm responsible for something really terrible in the future, aren't I? That's why you won't take me."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Man, slow down," the demon objects, raising his hands like he's surrendering something. "I promise you, it's nothing like that. I mean, yeah, your average demon would be all over that kinda action. We're mostly a lying, evil pack of fiends. But me...," he shrugs. "I'm not so much your average demon."

"Why not?" Garibaldi is still eyeing him suspiciously.

"Hey, I'd just love to _share_ and all," the demon snaps, "but I'd really rather be back in the pit of hellfire getting my nuts roasted on a spit over and over." Garibaldi thinks the demon rolls his eyes, though the solid black makes it hard to be sure. "Mind your own fucking business, Mikey."

"Uh _huh_," Garibaldi says meaningfully, but the demon just crosses his arms and stays stubbornly silent; the wordless impasse attenuates the moment to a sharp point. "So," Garibaldi finally continues grudgingly, "if you're not here for a trade, what the hell am I supposed to do?"

"Live your life. Make it a good one."

"You're not much help," Garibaldi tells him bitterly. "Why did you even come here?"

"Just making sure no one else got the chance to take your call. Operators are standing by, y'know." And with that, the demon steps backwards into a pool of shadow. His outline immediately begins to blur, growing hazy and indistinct until only the glinting, Cheshire grin is still discernible. "Be seeing you, Mikey," he whispers, yet the words seem to fill Garibaldi's ears like water, muffling and wrong and disorienting. And then the demon's gone, as thoroughly as if he never was.

 

The second time Garibaldi summons a demon, it's out of desperation.

He couldn't save Santiago, and Earth's pretty well screwed under the martial law of Clark the Shadow-puppet. Mars—which is where _Lise_ is, for God's sake—is being bombed. Even ISN is off the air. There are Earthforce ships en route to take B5 and arrest the entire command staff. No matter how Garibaldi looks at it, a lot of good people have already died, and a lot more are going to die in a few hours. The odds are pretty high that the entire Resistence could be hopelessly crippled before the day is out.

So he makes the box again, and puts it at a very low-traffic corridor junction down in Grey sector. He scatters a handful of sand he picked up from the rock garden over it.

"Well, well. We gotta stop meeting like this, Mikey. People'll talk."

Garibaldi turns around to find the demon, who looks precisely the same, leaning against the wall just as though he's been there all the time.

Seventeen years have given him a little more composure this go round, so Garibaldi demands, "Would you stop calling me 'Mikey' already?"

The demon just grins wolfishly. "No," he says. "Evil fiend, remember?"

"Fine," Garibaldi growls at him. "How 'bout I call you 'Hellboy', then?"

"Ha!" The demon chuckles like Garibaldi's made a good joke. "That movie kicked ass, man. Totally off-base, sure, but still. Yeah, you go ahead and call me that."

"Or you could just tell me your name," Garibaldi suggests causally, because he's had time to read about these things, and many sources suggest that's a good piece of information to have.

The demon grins and snaps his fingers at Garibaldi. As his chin tilts to the side, the endless black of his eyes picks up the dim glow of the corridor light; it makes a single spark in that ebony field like the light at the distant end of a tunnel. "Sure, Mikey," he says. "I'm Jon. Jon Bon Jovi."

"Has anyone ever told you that, for an infernal minion, you lie for crap?"

"Course not," the demon snorts. "Hell's all about building up your self-esteem."

"I'll bet," Garibaldi retorts. "You plan on letting me find out about that for myself this time?"

"Well, _this_ is awkward." The demon rubs his mouth with his hand, and his lips flush at the friction just like a man's would.

"You can't tell me it's not for the good of the whole damn universe _this_ time," Garibaldi argues.

"No, I know. Dude, I'd actually really like to help you out. I would. Cross my damned heart."

"But?" Garibaldi prompts sharply.

The demon sighs. "But there's one kinda deal I can't make, and that's one that breaks a deal one of us already made."

Garibaldi stares. He doesn't realize his jaw is hanging open a little until he notices that his tongue feels cold and dry. He shuts his mouth with a click and swallows hard. "Someone made a deal from the other side. To kill Santiago. To get us into this mess." He doesn't even phrase it as a question; the idea never occurred to him before, but now every gut instinct he has is sure of it.

The demon looks away. For the first time, he looks tired. His shoulders are a little bowed, and there's something bruised-looking around his mouth and eyes. "Said all I can say, Mikey," he finally answers, but it sounds like _sorry_. "Nothing I can do now. You hang in there and do your best, maybe things'll work out for you."

"Wow, great advice," Garibaldi snaps at him with less force than he intends; it just seems like kicking a man while he's down, even if he's not a man at all. "Is this the big destiny you were talking about?"

"Might be. Destiny's pretty much only a rearview mirror. You won't know what it looked like til it's behind you."

"I see you're just as helpful as ever, Bon Jovi."

"Yeah, I'm awesome like that." The demon shoots him a crooked grin that looks almost like an apology. "See you on the flipside, Mikey."

And that's pretty worryingly cryptic, so before the demon can pull whatever disappearing act he has in store this time, Garibaldi hastens to ask, "Are you saying I'm already...?" He jerks a thumb downwards.

The demon shakes his head without hesitation. "Nah, I didn't mean it like that. Just, if you make it through this, I figure I'll be seeing you again before too long. These are some crazy times, y'know."

"You're telling me," Garibaldi agrees emphatically. "It's like the whole world's catching fire."

The demon snorts faintly; it sounds a little like a laugh and a little like a groan. "Not _exactly_ like that, Mikey. Trust me on this one," he says. "You take care, now." And he's just gone again, smoothed away into the shadows of the dim corridor like footsteps on sand at high tide.

 

The third time Garibaldi summons a demon, it's out of desperation _and_ guilt.

It's hardly a year later, and he's on Mars, freshly reeling from his treachery with Sheridan and Bester's full confession of all the ways he programmed Garibaldi to be his pawn. Garibaldi's got his own mind back at last, no more Psi Corps control or implanted what-the-fuck-ever. Which, actually, is worse. He's come back to his senses just in time to understand that he's been forced to betray everyone and everything he cares about. In fact, he may even have managed to help bring about the fall of his own civilization.

It's not the kind of wake-up call he can take without screaming himself hoarse and slamming his knuckles into a wall until the skin bursts thoroughly enough to spatter abstract patterns over his boots. When he can calm down enough to think, the demon seems like his last, best hope.

So, Garibaldi suits up and goes outside the dome to the intersection of two transport tubes. There's room beneath them for him to put his box and awkwardly scoop a little red, Martian dirt over it with his glove-muffled hands. He leans back against the supporting scaffold of the nearest tube to wait.

"Hey there, sunshine," the demon's voice murmurs, sounding like he's speaking right into Garibaldi's ear, which should be impossible without a commlink.

Garibaldi whirls around as fast as he can in his cumbersome suit, and there's his demon in nothing but skin and cotton and denim in the icy vacuum.

"You keep calling me up like this, I'm gonna start thinking you got a thing for me," the demon drawls lazily.

"You're not my type," Garibaldi tells him witheringly.

"_Please_, dude. I'm _everybody's_ type." The demon winks and clicks his tongue, somehow so cheesy and overdone that it comes back around the spectrum to endearing, but Garibaldi's not in the mood to be charmed.

"I don't know, _dude_," Garibaldi snaps back. "I prefer a bit of iris with my pupil. Maybe even—and this is just off the top of my head—someone who _isn't_ a soulless creature devoted to serving the forces of evil." Garibaldi almost regrets saying it when the demon's face hardens, jaw tightening and mouth going to a flat line.

"And yet, a lowly, evil creature like me is still good enough when you're in trouble, right?"

Garibaldi sighs, because that's true enough. "Point," he concedes reluctantly. "I guess I did call you, after all."

"Guess so." The demon flicks a glance up, unerringly looking straight towards Earth. "And I suppose you wanna get to the business end of this conversation now."

"Yeah. Are you finally here to help this time?"

The demon appears to draw in a deep breath and blow it out through his pursed lips, although of course there's no air for him to inhale here. "I am," he admits, sounding oddly like he's conceding defeat. "If you're really sure that's what you want, Mikey."

"I'm sure," Garibaldi answers immediately. "I've already ruined everything good in my life. I made my own hell right here. What's left to be afraid of?"

The demon's hand shoots out to grip Garibaldi's shoulder, and the sensation through the suit is either numbingly cold or searingly hot, but Garibaldi can't quite decide which. "Listen to me, man," he insists urgently. "There's _always_ somewhere further to fall. You don't know from fear. Not yet. You do this, and you'll find out what Hell really is. You might hold out for centuries, but eventually you'll become everything you hate most, and you'll know—I mean really _know_, without any hope at all—that you can only get worse from there. If there's _any_ choice besides making yourself into a monster, I strongly suggest you try it."

Garibaldi pulls firmly away from the demon's grip. "I'm already a monster. This is the only way I can think of to fix things without somebody else paying the price. There're people counting on me, and I've let 'em down enough."

The demon cocks his head to the side and wearily rubs the heel of one hand into the darkness of his left eye. "You better really love these people, Mikey," he says softly. "Believe me, it's the only way you won't regret this every single minute for the rest of eternity." He glances back up to the Earth spinning in the heavens above them, and an unnameable expression crosses his face. "I'll get your guy out, and I'll claim you soul. But I'm not taking it until you die in your own sweet time." He looks back at Garibaldi, that enigmatic cast to his features still there. "My boss won't like us down a soul against our competition for a few decades or so, but you go and live your life. Make it count."

Garibaldi frowns at him, sensing something he doesn't understand passing beneath the surface of the words. "Your boss won't break the deal?" he finally asks, firmly quashing the urge to ask anything about the Devil. He tells himself he'd rather not know yet.

"Nah," the demon shakes his head. "Not once it's sealed."

"Or break _you_?" Garibaldi demands.

The demon gives him a grin that sits a little wrong on his face; the fit isn't right on his mouth somehow. "Nah," he repeats. "Got a soft spot for me still." The grin rights itself a bit then, settling more easily. "But aren't you a sweetheart for worrying? That, man, that is just freaking _adorable_."

"Shut up, Bon Jovi," Garibaldi snarks at him half-heartedly. "Isn't there a contract I need to sign in blood or something?"

"Sorry, Mikey. We do things a bit more...personal." The demon waggles his eyebrows and steps right up to Garibaldi, reaching for the helmet's release.

"Hey!" Garibaldi tries to jerk away from the reaching hand, but it's like he's moving in slow motion. The demon's fingers deftly open the catch and pop the helmet up and off before Garibaldi can even blink.

"Trust me, Mikey," the demon murmurs from far too close. "I'm not gonna let your lungs turn inside out or anything. I just need this off to seal the deal."

Garibaldi blinks at him, speechless and gaping, completely diverted by the way he can breathe perfectly normally. He doesn't have a chance to think of anything to say before the demon leans all the way in and presses his mouth to Garibaldi's open one.

It's just like a kiss, except that it's completely different. It's not like any kiss Garibaldi's ever had or imagined. It's a kiss in the same way, he thinks dizzily and utterly irrelevantly, that the markings on the wings of a moth are eyes.

Garibaldi's never noticed the subtle, underlying taste of human in all the people he's kissed before, but he notices its lack now. As the demon's tongue snakes between his parted lips, it moves sinuously like it's tracing hidden symbols inside the vault of his mouth, and it carries with it only the flavor of smoke. There's still pressure and friction and wetness, and the act still feels _necessary_, as the best kisses do, but the need here is more like gravity and less like passion.

Garibaldi's flesh has that shiver across the surface with a fever smoldering just beneath the skin, the way it only has before when he's been really sick. Later, he'll figure that's why he presses back against the demon and tries to tangle their tongues together; it must be that, because it doesn't feel like anything Garibaldi understands as desire. The demon nips slightly at his tongue in what feels like an admonishment to keep still, draws one last glyph against the bony roof of Garibaldi's mouth, then pulls away.

For just a moment, the demon stands with his hands still wrapped, fiery-cold, around the nape of Garibaldi's neck. In that instant, Garibaldi could swear that the darkness of the demon's eyes implodes down into human pupils, leaving veined whites and startlingly green irises in its wake. But then Garibaldi blinks and the demon is a clear yard away, hands at his sides and eyes as impenetrably black as a singularity, so Garibaldi thinks it must have been a trick of the light or something.

The demon casually tosses the helmet back. "There," he says. "All signed and sealed."

Garibaldi catches the helmet and raises his eyebrows incredulously. "_That's_ how you people make deals?"

The demon shrugs nonchalantly, his smirk firmly back in place. "You word is your bond, and your soul's in your breath. Best way to mark both is a little tonsil hockey, Mikey. That just stands to reason." And he says it like it should be really obvious, and maybe Garibaldi's just a bit slow.

Garibaldi snorts derisively and carefully snaps his helmet back into place. After he hears the reassuring click of the seals engaging, he adds, "Wow. _There's_ a line I've never heard before. You spend eternity thinking that up?"

The demon laughs, sounding a little surprised and honestly amused. "Don't take this too hard, Mikey, but I honestly haven't whiled away my centuries working on ways to get a little play from you. Not that you aren't a handsome hunk of manflesh, hair issues aside, but still."

Garibaldi can't help chuckling, too, even though it's a bit distracting that every place the demon touched inside his mouth is just a little numb now. But he's got bigger things to worry about, so he just asks, "So, you fixed things? Sheridan's free?"

"I'm going for a little more subtlety here," the demon answers. "There's no call to go rewriting reality if we can help it. Go back to your people and tell them what really happened to—"

"Are you _crazy_?" Garibaldi cuts him off. "After what I did, I'll be lucky if they don't shoot me before I get a word out."

"I got it covered," the demon assures him. "They'll believe you, and they'll help. And you'll go fetch Sheridan, who will be just fine, and you'll be on track to take Earth back again. Trust me."

"I take it back," Garibaldi groans, shaking his head. "_I'm_ crazy. _You're_ demented."

The demon raises one eyebrow in a 'duh' sort of expression. "Well, yeah. But I'm a demented demon of my word. And it's not like you've got another option for rescuing your guy."

"What the hell." Garibaldi throws up his hands. "I'll give it a shot. What have I got to lose?"

The demon's face sobers. "I told you about that already, Mikey," he says quietly. "There's always further to fall. And there's one more thing I wanna tell you about that. You listen to me, because this part is seriously important." He steps close again, the void of his eyes burning intently into Garibaldi's. "_Don't tell anyone about this_. Not anyone, you hear me? Because if they care about you enough, they'll try to save you from Hell. And the only thing worse than watching yourself go darker and darker is watching it happen to someone you love. Someone who wouldn't be there if it weren't for you. Someone who becomes a monster—a fucking _king_ of monsters—just to protect your sorry ass." The demon sounds like the words are too big for his throat now, like they're half choking him. It hurts to look into the naked wound of his face. He swallows hard, his Adam's apple working, before he adds, "Hell's got a way of turning your greatest strengths into weaknesses. Don't you let it happen."

Garibaldi wants to ask who followed his demon into Hell. He wants to ask, but he's just not cold enough to tear that hurt any further open. Not yet. Instead he just says, "I won't." And, because the demon still looks like he's made of bowstrings and pain, Garibaldi repeats, low and solemn as a promise, "I won't."

"Okay." The demon heaves a deep breath of the non-existent air. If it's a little shaky around the edges, they both pretend not to notice.

"Okay," Garibaldi echoes him. They regard each other silently through the lull for a moment, letting the tension of the moment fade to a bearable level, before Garibaldi adds, "So now what?"

"You go off to your people and do your thing. Save the universe. And I'll be waiting for you on the other side of your happily ever after." The demon steps back slowly, one foot after the other in a steady cadence like a heartbeat, the edges of his shape starting to smudge into shadow. "You make me wait a good long time, you hear?" And he melts seamlessly into the clot of shadow beneath the transport tube before Garibaldi can even think of answering.

 

Michael Garibaldi will, indeed, make Hell wait a good long time, and he will have his happily ever after, more or less. And he won't breathe a word about his deal to anyone. On his deathbed, sunk deeply in age with friends and family taking turns to sit with him, Delenn will hold his hand.

"My dear friend," she will whisper quietly, so as not to wake Ivanova, who will be asleep in the chair beside the bed, or Garibaldi's great-grandaughter, who will be curled up on the window-seat. "The universe waits for you."

"I believe _something_ is waiting for me," Garibaldi will rasp laboriously.

"My people say that at the passing of great souls the stars themselves sing in welcome. They will surely greet you with a joyous chorus." She will smile and gently stroke her thumb across the parchment-thin skin on the back of his hand.

Garibaldi's eyes will sag shut and the corner of his mouth will quirk just a little, albeit tiredly. "I think that I'll have friends wherever I'm going," he will breathe, so softly that Delenn will barely be able to make out the words.

A little more than an hour after that, Garibaldi's eyes will open again; there will be a strange mixture of trust and trepidation there, which will make Delenn wonder. He will frown at something unseen beyond her shoulder. "Shut up, Bon Jovi. I didn't _miss_ you," he will snipe querulously, but without any real heat at all. And with that, he will draw in a deep inhalation, gathering in tightly around it like he's about to leap from a great height, and then he will release both breath and life together.

And if Delenn will be so distracted by Garibaldi's passing and his puzzling final words that she fails to notice that the shadows at her back are deeper and more numerous than the bedside lamp can account for, that is only what Garibaldi would have wished and surely for the best.


End file.
